The 9 Rights of Every Writer — Peer Pressure Is for Jr. High School

Can’t Stay in My Box — I Never Was Cool

I suppose if I were the savvy one, I’d wait until Monday or Tuesday to write this post. But I’m not. I’m the one who writes when the writing needs to be done. This post can’t wait until Monday or Tuesday, and darn it. It shouldn’t either.

The dialogue around the blogs that I read a lot and among some bloggers that I care about has been around one big question lately that keeps getting twisted and turned.

Do I write about what I know and want, or do I change what I write when I see big traffic come?

It’s time we talk about the rights of a writer.

The 9 Rights of a Writer

The 9 Rights of Every Writer is a book by Vicki Spandel that I found last May at a teacher’s conference. I’ve never found anything like before or since. I’ve wondered how I might share what it says with you, but until now the occasion has never come.

The 9 Rights as they’re written are meant for teachers in schools to help kids to learn to write as writers not robots. I’m going to share the 9 rights with you here and adjust them to fit where our conversation has been.

1. The right to be reflective. If you’re having a crisis of what to write about, STOP. Breathe. Don’t do anything, except clear out your brain and give your mind room to have thoughts of your own. Take five minutes to look at trees or listen to music.

Everyone says to write your passion, to write what you know. How can you do that when your head is full of the clutter of information that’s everywhere?

2. The right to choose a personally important topic. Yeah, a personally important topic is the answer. That’s why the question came up. A personally important topic might not appeal to the biggest universe. Appealing to the biggest universe is one-size-fits-all, sitcom writing. The wider the pool the shallower the water becomes. The shallower the water, the more quickly it evaporates.

Who are those people on reddit and digg that are deciding what we blog about? Is that really who your audience is? How long do they stay on your site when they come? Are they really reading what you write about? Aren’t they the same group that decided what was cool in junior high school?

3. The right to go “off topic.” I can’t stay in my box. Anyone who reads this blog knows that. So what? Regular readers also know what to expect. Sometimes a change offers variety. I’ve decided not to worry about it. All work and no play makes Jack and Jill both dull.

Go off topic and let the world shake once in a while. Give yourself permission to be brilliant.

4. The right to personalize the writing process. This right is most important. If no one has made it clear, you should know — no two writers have the same process, nor do any two writers follow their process the same way for every piece that they write.

5. The right to write badly. It’s called a draft. Sometimes it’s called a final published piece too. No writer does everything perfectly. The goal is to get better than the last one.

I have a notebook of things I wrote in college where I actually wrote on each page good, fair, and poor. I did that in case people found it. I didn’t want them to think I thought it was good writing. How ludicrous! Now I keep it to remind me that I was once someone who thought writers had to write perfectly.

6. The right to “see” others write. The beauty of blogging is that we can share in our writing experience. We can look over shoulders and watch how people do things. We can ask questions. We can be learners. We can consider what we do important.

7. The right to be assessed well. You get to choose whose assessment you listen to, whose opinion counts.

8. The right to go beyond formula. Look around. The best ideas are always the ones you’ve never seen before . . . the ones that take something old and twist it into something new again. We don’t have to follow anyone’s rules as long as the message we send is the one that readers receive clearly.

9. The right to find your own voice. Voice is the part of writing that is authentically you, without self-consciousness, without worry about what the other kids or the teacher might think. Every reader comes to a writer looking for something more than the words. It’s not disregarding them to let them see who you are. It’s showing respect for them and respect for yourself.

I wrote this today rather than Monday or Tuesday because it’s not about traffic; it’s about writing. I awoke this morning wanting to say that reddit and digg have the power to be another form of peer pressure to write what they want. I think that peer pressure is best left in junior high school.

We should always care about readers. You know that I do. One way to show that is to give them the best me I’ve got.

I hope this helps with your question about traffic v. writing your passion.

Comments

To show you how self centered I am. When I read your posts I think you are writing about me. I think in my mind, Liz just went to my blog and found something wrong and came up with a whole post about it.

Actually I have written two posts this week that I never would have written if I hadn’t found your site. Reading your site has inspired me.

My wife teaches mentally disabled children in elementary school, I think the label is TMD. She has a favorite song you might like. It’s by Harry Chapin and it’s called “Flowers are Red.” If you ever get a chance listen to it. I thought of it when I read this post.

Liz, this post is one of the many good reminders out there why you are the official Den Mother of our crazy little band. Of course if you keep cranking out the powerful posts at this rate you’ll completely outgrow us! 🙂

Big Roy, that song is truly one of the under-recognized greats out there.

There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one

My point is that I’m writing this comment and Bennett Theissen easily excitable friend is angrily using Google Chat to berate me for not answering some question he asked six chat posts ago, as I type in this comment.

What I mean is we are all multi-jousting in polymorphous blogocombat and have no time to worry about traffic, site meters, comment niceties, being added to blogrolls, or forming cozy photo ops for WordCamp women.

heh

We are busy improving and new teching our blogs. We are doing podcasts and video and dreaming of telepresencing.

So don’t change your content just due to massive traffic boosts from 13 year old males who worship Harry Potter and Grand Theft Auto due to your posting of racier and sexier images and dirty words.

So donÃ¢â¬â¢t change your content just due to massive traffic boosts from 13 year old males who worship Harry Potter and Grand Theft Auto due to your posting of racier and sexier images and dirty words.

Thank you for this article, Liz. It addresses something I’ve been thinking about lately, especially points 2 and 3.

This week has been totally off topic for my blog. I thought a lot about Monday’s post, just because it was off-topic, and off-putting to a lot of people today, but it was personally important so I put it up.

I’m not a meme kind of guy and tend to avoid groupthink, but Basil the donkey is so fun I just had to get involved and write about him. He’s developed more of a personality than some people I know. It caused a spike in traffic (thanks, Chris!). A lot of the people that came because of that post won’t stay once they see what the blog is primarily about, but that’s okay. I needed a laugh.

Rick,
Thank you for saying what you did. I think that lots of bloggers hold back just for the reasons you stated here. But the relationship between reader and blogger is just that . . . a relationship. If we’re going to be authentic and transparent as we’re always talking about, then why not break out of the box and sometimes talk about things outside of it?

She gets a big kudos from me for getting kids to read again though – especially for getting boys to read again. I’m willing to forgive her any number of literary sins and deus ex machina plots just for that, but not to the extent that I’ll start blogging about how she writes 🙂

While it is never a good idea to generalize, I’m going to do it anyway 🙂

Individually, I’m sure that the vast majority of users of the social sites you mentioned are fine, upstanding web citizens. Heck, I’m one of them at times, and I’m decent folk. Still, they seem to take on that ‘mob mentality’ when they get tightly bunched together. Kind of like teenage boys, one at a time and they’re not bad, but throw a bunch of ’em into a paid hotel room and watch out (especially if they’re bored).

You really have to think about your target audience. The users of those sites can be a very volatile bunch, it’s going to be tough to come up with a long term plan that is going to feed off of those users. Maybe I’m just getting old, but that seems way too stressful for me. When I see sites that are intentionally targeting those users a really think to myself ‘They’re not going to be around long’. Some have, but it’s a tough way to go. As Clint Eastwood said in ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’, “…dyin’ ain’t no way to make a livin’…”

I’ve had some of my articles make it to the front page of those sites, and it’s hard to convert them into steady readers. They come, they see, and they go. True, my site isn’t geared toward that crowd so it’s not surprising that few of them become loyal readers. But then, I didn’t write those articles in an attempt to specifically target them, and that’s what we’re really talking about, isn’t it?

Mmm – quite a few of my musings lately have been based around a conversation I had with Iain Banks in a bar a few years back – admittedly, I remember the conversation getting increasingly …hazy… as the evening progressed since we were sitting in a bar with a wide selection of whiskey.

AdLib,
You’re right. At least I think I’m hearing you. In one out of 50 or so, there is something worth checking into. But we can’t let the crowd decide what we’re reading, even worse to let them decide what we’re writing.

Then we’d become sit-com list blogs about gadgets with celebrity photos.

Yes ME Strauss, the William Shatners of the bloogyspherical bloatosphere, the Blogos Fear that permeates the dark switch nets of auto-cannibalistic vanity, they all plounce all over the place, drunkenly going where no blogger should go.

You are so correct to state that a blog community or blog glimpsing cult or cul-de-sac mustn’t determine, influence, or bully our postings and titles.

Yeah, it’s also a question of time – if you spend your writing time or reading time chasing trends, well, frankly, you’re going to suck as a writer. Harlequin romances sell by the truckload, but they’re not literature – they barely qualify as writing. Blogging for the Digg audience is the equivalent of writing Harlequin romances, as far as I can tell…

Advice Librarian and Cree Maestro: you make me laugh. Grim, obnoxious, nearly dead Dada-esque Vaspers must go now and bother some other blogs.

But you are very funny and smart, like I aspire to be someday when Friday the 13th falls on a Thursday during a blue moon eclipse, that’s when I also plan to be funny and smart, and my business dominatrix who whips me into pitiful groveling shapelessness, she who is known as No Woman, she has promised me primrosedly that I shan’t be largely dismayed nor disappointed.

As far as blog stats go, I’ve realized that they don’t do anything good for me. If the number of readers seems high, I feel self-conscious and get stagefright; if it’s too low, I feel like my blog is not a good use of my time. So, I keep a magic (and secret) number of readers in my head that keeps me feeling comfortable and, therefore, productive.

Cuileann,
Great to see you! Thank you!
What a great way to use your head, so to speak, to keep yourself productive and writing.

The truth is the stat programs vary wildly and to get a great one isn’t free. So we really don’t know how many folks are reading and we shouldn’t be worrying. One great reader who appreciates what we’re saying is worth the time it takes to write.

Why is it when you spend days researching a blog series and you finally take it from outline to fruition that nobody comes?? Your great idea dies a slow and painful death with nary a comment.

Yet you can’t give in to the pressure. You must put your best thoughts forward. Days later a wayward traveler stops by, fueled by a strange query from the googlebot. The stranger finds value and leaves a comment. The spam-karma engine almost flags it as spam since the post is so old. The comment brings new life and a new series is born… this time fueled by passion and a renewed vigor.

Comments beget comments and soon there are many. The posting path has gone from trail to road to super highway. The author who remained true to himself suddenly finds an audience. And the idea has found wings.

Amen to all of the above, Liz. Very, very well put. The great, compelling writers are the ones whose voices are unique and whose passion is palpable–whatever the subject. Once I figured that out for myself, the process got much easier and, dare I say it, more fun. Or is it funner?

I started my blog last year in July and, in going back over it, I find that my style hasn’t changed all that much but my WRITING has! There has been a marked improvement. Of course, my blog is highly topical and deals with the technical side of computers, but the process and ‘rules’ you promote are used (at least I try to use them). 😉

The one thing I have had to do is throw away a large chunk of ‘stuff’ I was fed during high school and, yes, even some from college. I’m finding, in fact, that my readers are more accepting if they can understand what I’m saying. So I use the old ‘Fog’ index and try to write to the 10-12 grader. From the comments I’ve received, my content is generally comprehended. Even college grads!

Writers should keep the intended reader in mind!

I’ll never be a Clarke or anything, but I get the job done one task at a time. 😉

Hi Handicapped Computerist!
Welcome!
Your words are wonderful. Every piece you write should be better than the last and it sure sounds like its and that you have found your “feet’ as a writer. You know that when other folks words about what you write become “just opinions.”

Teachers are just that teachers. We cannot teach you to write we can only point the way to good writing. You have to find the way to communicate the mesage to your readers.

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